Sorry, no. But well done for gaining that status.

I'm assuming you mean the AFS feed that allows you to specify the term for ads and tailor the look using Javascript - if that's the case then I would use several search engines to look for parts of the code...

google_afs_client should always be in the source for an AFS implimentation - try a search on Live.com for that and you'll see a few examples (and a lot of noise).

Have you tested the quality of ads? We've seen a mixed bag when it comes to quality (generally good though, with national terms being excellent), but we have some of the most difficult commercial terms to cater for (very specific, very local).

Good luck...

Our of curiousity, what is the range (rough guess) one must get into to be approved for custom ad formats?

Last time I checked, I believe it was 1 million hits a day.

Our quality of ads has always been pretty close to awful and we've gotten by almost soley on traffic volume. So, I'm optimistic that this will help. I've tried searching for terms like this and the noise of unwanted results is a lot to sift through. Looks like we'll have to rely more on feedback from our account rep that mimicking success of other sites.

Out of interest, what sort of traffic is required to get an account rep - or do we all have one?

It took us a few hundred thousand adsense impressions a day.

t took us a few hundred thousand adsense impressions a day.

was that one site on that account, or many sites added together ?

[edited by: Lame_Wolf at 8:10 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2009]

one site one account

We got an Adsense rep for less than 20,000 pageviews a day. But CPM is phenomenal, thus pushing the income. This is for only 1 site

Do publishers get approved for custom ad formats simply based on the amount of traffic - is there not a quality/performance component?

Do publishers approved for custom ad formats have their own terms as far as ad layout, placement, etc. or are they just simply exempted from the terms everyone else follows?

FarmBoy

There is a quality and performance component. It is a bit subjective though. We've been using adsense for well over 5 years with reasonably consistant click thru percentages and reasonable rates of traffic increases. I'm sure they also performed a review for the potential of click fraud prior to accepting our request.

When you get the ability to create custom ad formats, each and every aspect of your custom formats must be approved by your adsense account manager. If I'm not mistaken, this also goes in front of a group review. This does include subsequent changes and there are written rules to follow as well.

So, we drew up five different formats and are awaiting approval on them. In our test environment, our ad formats really do improve how the ads are presented. Hopefully, we won't have to make too many adjustments to get them approved.

Other than that, essentially the same TOS applies.